Print marketing strategies for your business
Whatever your chosen route to market, it’s vital to have a marketing strategy guiding your actions. You need to understand why you are undertaking defined marketing activities, and what results you can expect from your efforts.
Your strategy doesn’t need to be set in stone and can have elements of flexibility. It can and should evolve to match identified market trends and requirements to drive sales for your products and services.
Having the ability to understand your response rates and successes will enable you to make the right changes to your strategies. Collating a plan will always help ensure positive results.
The why, who, what and where
Understand the why, who, what and where elements of your campaign before you make decisions and put plans in place on how to achieve your objectives.
Decide on your objectives:
- Do you want to attract new potential customers?
- Retain current clients?
- Are you launching new products or services?
- Do you want to build brand awareness?
- Are you seeking to generate repeat business?
- Do you want to interact with customers or improve customer loyalty?
Knowing what you want to achieve will help you measure the success of your activities.
- How are you aiming to measure your success?
- Additional traffic to your website or landing page?
- Leads generated?
- Enquiries received online or by phone?
- Referrals?
The right print collateral makes it easier.
Custom or bespoke print collateral can make tracking your actual results so much easier. You can use unique tracking codes, a QR code and offer codes to identify the source of each enquiry. You can include unique telephone numbers with different campaigns to accurately measure responses.
More detailed results can be achieved by using different codes within the same campaign to identify where the best conversion results are originating.
Remember to use your results data and knowledge to improve future campaigns.
Decide who you are targeting.
Existing clients?
Prospects?
Cross-selling to other customers?
Information for your customer base?
People who clicked a link or abandoned a cart?
Specific geographical locations, defined demographics such as recently retired, pet owners, Newlyweds, new car purchases etc.
Full and partially addressed mail
Consider the benefits of partially addressed or fully addressed mail. Partially addressed mail addresses a household and not an individual and is therefore always GDPR compliant.
“88% of partially addressed mail is opened, read, filed or set aside for later.” Source: JICMAIL Q2 2018 – Q1 2019
Fully addressed mail includes full personalisation and is therefore subject to GDPR regulations. Data houses and data brokers sell GDPR-compliant data, and this is usually the best and quickest way to acquire your data.
You can segment in many ways when you buy business data, such as geographic location, business size or focus (using SCI codes), and even interests and behaviours to achieve measurable objectives.
Timing is everything
Timing your campaign will help ensure you optimise the results. No point trying to sell Easter eggs at Christmas for example.
Remember industry events such as major exhibitions, or even nationwide effects like school holidays can impact behaviours and buying patterns. Always consider seasonality and plan well in advance.
If you’re launching a new product to your customer base, you could consider teaser campaigns, early bird promotions or exclusive offers for existing customers to generate leads. Automating your marketing systems in terms of follow-ups will contribute to the success of your campaigns. Creating different touch points to engage with the audience.
Understand your lead times
Design, production, and delivery all take time, and the complexity of your printed collateral will impact the time it takes to get the item from the initial concept through to delivery.
If you have incorporated special processes like die cutting and embossing or laminating involved in your custom print collateral work, you’ll need to allow for extra time. The Paragon print and marketing solutions team will be able to advise you accurately on this.
Fulfilment services
You may find it useful to employ specialist fulfilment services to handle the sending of your campaigns, certainly if they are large-scale. Paragon offers this service and we’re happy to discuss requirements.
Choosing the right offer for your audience
Even the greatest print collateral marketing materials in support of your products and services won’t work if you don’t market them to the right audience.
Select relevant offers, add-ons, or upgrades. It doesn’t always have to be about special offers and discount codes. Planning your proposition and choosing your audience carefully will enhance your success rate and drive sales.
“91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who recognise, remember, and provide relevant offers and recommendations.” Source: Accenture Pulse Survey
Look back at previous campaigns and marketing materials and learn from the results when planning your next campaign. The use of a good CRM system will give you so much material to create offers designed around identified customer behaviours – data is key.
Make the most of personalisation
It makes your customers feel valued. Even though people understand the idea behind personalisation there is a bonus to receiving communications with our name on it that makes us feel special and creates a very personal connection and is an instant attention grabber to the individual.
So, make it personal, keep it short and to the point, and make sure your message is clear and attractive to the recipient and you will see the benefits in the response rates.
The AIDA approach
Try using the process of AIDA as a guideline and always use a call to action.
Attention: grab the reader’s attention with a strong title or headline
Interest: generate interest in your offer by promoting the benefits
Desire: make the reader desire your offer – create an emotional connection
Action: ask the reader to act
Be creative too
Creative eye-catching designs will influence response rates. Keeping an eye on the marketing budget, take the opportunity to invest in professional creative design for your new marketing collateral. It’s worth spending money to reap the rewards.
The Paragon design team will take the time and effort to understand your products or services when creating collateral and instantly communicate key benefits clearly and effectively, helping to ensure your campaign is memorable.
Furthermore, it will help your business and your brand look more professional in the eyes of your target audience.
“38% of people said that the physical properties of a mail piece will influence how they feel about the sender.” Source: Royal Mail, Market Reach.
Summary points
“Mail is remembered 35% more than social media ads and 49% more than email.” Source: Royal Mail, Market Reach.
It’s not the right approach for every business, but it has an important role to play in the marketing mix. It’s a tough and competitive market for all businesses.
Re-evaluating your strategies and working to use both print and online marketing collateral together in an effective manner will help you move your business forward.
Talk to our professional team. Paragon has the knowledge and expertise to contribute positively to your campaigns and initiatives, and the drive to work with you to ensure every opportunity is optimised professionally.
